The Arcades Project - Operi

hounds and the faxes are yelping, darkness is everywhere, and nature shudders
and trembles under the whipcord of God; ... The writer-specter sees the phan­
tom ideas. Words take fright, sentences shiver, ... the willdowpane grows dim,
the lamp is afraid . ... Take care, living man, 0 man of a century, 0 proscript of
a terrestrial idea! For this is madness, this is the tomb, this is the infinite-this is a
phantom idea" (p. 390). The "great spirit;' in the same context: "He encounters
certitude sometiInes as an obstacle on his path, and clarity sOllletimes as a fear"
(p. 391).-From Post-Scriptum de rna vie: "There exists a hilarity of shadows.
Nocturnal laughter floats in the ail: There are merry specters" (p. 396). [dI7,4]
Hugo fanlOusly intoxicates himself-and not only in William ShaliesjJeare-with
long lists of the names of great geniuses. In this regard, one should recall the
poees passion for imagining his own nanle writ large; we know he read an H in
the towers of Notre Dame. Another aspect of the matter is disclosed by his
spiritualistic experiences. The great geniuses whose naInes he tirelessly rehearses,
always in a different order, are his "avatars," incarnations of his own ego, and the
more present for being ranged so before it. [dI7a,l]
Just as, during the writing of Notre-Dame de Parl:" Hugo every evening would
visit one of the towers of the cathedral, so on Guernsey (Jersey?) he sought out
the rocher des proscrits